Page 136 of Before You Can Blink
“Mm-hmm.” I nodded. Turning to Daisy, I asked, “Can we have a minute alone?”
There was a question in my wife’s eyes, but I shook my head slightly, silently asking her to drop it, which she did, rising from my bedside and leaving the room with our children.
“Shut the door,” I commanded, and Mac was quick to obey.
“Listen, if this is about what I said about orgasms earlier . . .” he began, but I cut him off.
“Come sit down.” I gestured to the chair near the bed.
Swallowing so hard his Adam’s apple bobbed, he dropped onto the chair.
“Is Bentley okay?” My battered heart twisted at the memory of the little boy’s terror-stricken face.
Mac let out a heavy exhale. “He’s rattled, as you might expect, but I think once he sees that you’re on the mend, he’ll be all right.”
“I sure hope so.”
The man seated by my side eyed me carefully. “That all that’s weighing on your mind, Jett?”
Shaking my head, I confessed, “I need a favor.”
My son-in-law leaned forward, resting his forearms on his thighs. “Anything, Jett. You name it.”
This was the tricky part. There’d been a thought bouncing around at the back of my brain for years now. And I kept it buried deep, too ashamed of voicing it aloud because it was selfish, and I feared what it would do to my soul, knowing I’d condemned someone else’s loved one to death in order to save my wife. But now, if there was even the slightest chance that I wouldn’t live long enough to see Daisy recover, I had to ensure that she would.
“This is a too big of an ask,” I hedged.
He fixed me with a stare, his dark brown eyes full of sincerity. “Impossible.”
We’ll see.
Heregoes nothing.
“You left a lot of things behind when you moved to Rust Canyon.” Mac’s brows rose, but he remained silent, allowing me to continue. “I know it’s been a long time, but I was hoping you might still have a few connections.”
“What kind of connections?” he pressed.
“Ones that might have a way of getting Daisy’s name moved up the transplant list.” It had been nearly three years, and we were creeping dangerously close to the front end of that five to ten years we’d been estimated my wife could survive on dialysis alone.
Lips parting on an exhale, an “oh” slipped out.
Immediately, I began to backtrack. “You know what? Never mind. I shouldn’t have asked, it’s—”
Mac held up a hand, effectively silencing me. “Jett, you asked for a favor; the least you can do is give me a minute to figure out how I can grant it.”
He scrubbed a hand over the stubble lining his jaw, and I watched on as the wheels turned in his brain.
Eventually, he spoke.
“Messing with the transplant list wouldn’t be exactly ethical,” he began.
“Right, I know that. It’s why—”
“You gonna let me finish or keep interrupting?” Sitting back in the chair, he folded both arms over his chest.
“Sorry,” I muttered.
“But what if there was a way we could find Daisy a donor outside of the list?”
